Category Archives: Arc 8.6.5: Harvest

Whatever sorcery had created the Graffiti Knight’s staff, it worked against The Thing That Eats. He hit it, and with every hit, the Thing That Eats deflated a little more and the embodied ghosts faded.

With the last hit, any remains of The Thing disappeared, leaving Necromancer bruised, bloodied and unconscious. In that same blow, all the ghosts disappeared.

More to the point, I could answer the question of why there was even any kind of fight going on. With Marcus and Sydney raining down lasers from above and Amy, Cassie and Vaughn getting out of that side of the van, they had a lot of firepower to work with.

In the moment that I looked over there, I fully understood why the fight was still going. Worse, it was coming for us.

Vengeance stood straighter. “We can banish you from this universe. Don’t think we can’t—”

He didn’t get to finish the sentence. In that moment, Alden’s head changed to that of The Thing That Eats. He wasn’t the only one. With a scream, the head of the woman that the elf had called Necromancer changed too.

Her hands continued to smoke, but she didn’t use them. The Thing’s mouth opened and swallowed the Graffiti Knight, weird, inscribed armor and all. Continue reading Harvest: Part 5→

From behind me, I heard the sound of a seatbelt clasp clicking open. After a few footsteps, Rod pushed his way to the front between Amy and me.

“Hey,” Cassie said, but Rod ignored her.

“The Graffiti Knight. Rumor in the magical community is that the Council got some guy to wear that armor. I heard that it’s cursed or connected to an old god or something. There’s a price for using it, so they only get it out for emergencies.”

“The gun thinks I should shoot him now.” Cassie stood, pointing the gun in his general direction, but not directly at him.

“Does it have anything nonlethal?” I watched Alden as he stood. The combination of speedster and being infected meant that he’d be able to do more damage than I liked to think.

The only person fast enough to counter him inside the city was Kid Biohack, and he didn’t have a ward to protect him.

Thinking strategically, killing Alden was a good choice. Morally, killing someone who was controlled by an outside force struck me as questionable—except that if keeping him alive destroyed the city, killing my parents and untold others…

I thought about that. “If the animals were summoned by wizards, I’m not sure I’m impressed. If you think about it, The Thing That Eats is powerful enough when it’s taken over supers that animals can’t hurt it much, but it can hurt them.”

Amy cocked her head, thinking. Then she straightened. “When I was back home, my father used to say ‘think sideways’ a lot. My mother is the queen. My father acts as her spymaster. My guess is that they’re using the animals for reconnaissance and maybe to scare normal people away from the battle. If they do make them fight, it’s probably because The Thing can’t possess them.”

Amy looked over the group. “I wish we could take all of you. You don’t know right now how much I wish we had time to construct more wards, but we don’t.”

We had a large group, but we were leaving one too—Kayla, Chris, Dayton, Julie, Shannon, and even Kid Biohack could have helped. Despite his lack of powers, Jeremy might have too. That went for the injured (Haley, Sean, and Jody) and the infected as well.